


this is how we tried to love

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Family Issues, First Time, M/M, Post-Episode: s14e13 Lebanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: Sam gazes up at his brother, eyes catching on the freckled constellations across his cheeks, obscured by bruises like stars on a cloudy night. “Yeah, Dean. ‘Eighteen years coming’, remember? I’m not freaking out about it.”Dean’s knees pop as he lowers himself to the bed beside Sam, their shoulders brushing. Sam can’t imagine how the Dean in that paradox timeline could have still been alive.“Eighteen years,” Dean murmurs. “Jesus. That’s how old you were when you... Half your life, Sammy.” He lifts his glass to his lips, hesitates, then shakes his head and takes a gulp. Eyes closing as he swallows, he turns, blinking slowly as his gaze travels over Sam’s face. “Now that is some delayed gratification, goddamn.”The story picks up right at the end of ‘Lebanon’, after Sam smashes the pearl to send John back to 2003.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 34
Kudos: 95
Collections: 2019 Supernatural & CWRPF Holiday Exchange





	this is how we tried to love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sci_fis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sci_fis/gifts).



> Title is from 'The Dream of a Common Language' by Adrienne Rich:
> 
> this we were, this is how we tried to love,  
> and these are the forces they had ranged against us,  
> and these are the forces we had ranged within us,  
> within us and against us, against us and within us.

It’s over, done, irreversible, before it occurs to Sam to wonder, _Why me?_

He runs his fingers over the edge of the bowl and sets it down on the table, off-kilter on the small mound of shards that used to be his best hope for saving Dean.

“I think...” Mom’s voice breaks, cresting a wave of choked-back emotion. She reaches for Dean without seeming to notice she’s doing it. Sam looks between the two of them and thinks, _Oh, yes. That_ _’_ _s why._

If it meant sparing Mom and Dean even a moment of self-reproach, Sam would have smashed that pearl a hundred times and thanked god for it. Or whatever supposedly-benevolent force was still out there taking calls.

Mom blows out a shaky breath and tries to smile. “I’m gonna go take a drive, okay?”

“Yeah, Mom,” Dean squeezes her hand then reaches into his pocket. “You wanna take the car?”

She looks at him blankly for a moment and then recoils, blinking a couple of times, shaking her head. “No, no. I’ve got my truck, just...just need some air.”

She’s backing away from them as she speaks but stops herself when she’s just out of reach, and takes a step that brings them both back into the circle of her arms. “I’ll be back soon,” she whispers, and kisses Sam’s cheek before she’s gone.

Come on, Dean’s head-tilt says, and Sam turns to follow his brother. 

There’d been no discussion. The moment had simply come and when Dad said, ‘Okay, Sammy,’ Sam just picked up the pearl, placed it on the table, and hefted the heavy bowl in his hand. There hadn’t been a moment of even silent negotiation about whose job it would be, that single, swift act of sending Dad back and breaking Mom’s heart. 

In the kitchen, Sam expects Dean to go for the emergency top-shelf whiskey stashed in one of the pantries. Instead he’s digging in the fridge, coming up with the six-pack of microbrews they’d picked out together in Colorado last month, when Sam made them impulse-stop at a brewery on the edge of town. Sam nods when Dean looks at him with the eyebrows and thinks it’s probably a good sign.

They end up in the garage. Mom’s truck is gone and the air is filled with lingering exhaust fumes while the Impala looks as though she’s waiting for them. They set to their mindless tasks, the way they always do when something’s going on that leads them here, to this necessary communion with the car even when she doesn’t really need the attention. Sam has a list of about four things he’s allowed to do without Dean’s supervision and he does them. The oil level’s good, the door hinges need a little grease but only a very little and he gives them even less because he knows they both like the individual sounds their doors make when they squeak open and slam shut. 

He’s sitting on an upturned crate by the open hood and staring at the carburetor. More accurately, he’s staring into the past and remembering the time he barely knew what a carburetor looked like let alone what it did. Dean’s voice is ringing in his head, words he barely thinks about anymore but a tone that will never leave him: _It_ ’ _s time. You should know how to fix it. You_ ' _re gonna need to know these things, for the future._

_The future._ The future in which Dean would be burning in hell so that Sam could stay alive, alone.

His face was busted up back then too, Sam remembers. He prods at the bone-deep bruise on his cheek and suddenly he can barely draw breath. _He_ ’ _s right here_ , he tells himself, blurring eyes glued to Dean’s legs, all he can see of him from here. _He’s not going to Hell, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to let it happen._

  
  
Sam’s chest unbinds enough that he can finally gulp in a huge breath, stifling the sound in a swallow of beer, which works about as well as you’d expect. Dean pops up from under the car, gets up on his feet but doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Which only makes Sam feel about a hundred times worse because Dean thinks he knows, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

“Dean, uh.” Sam wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist, then looks up at his brother. “You know, with Dad, with sending him back. If it...hah...if it’d been you?” He shakes his head, feels his nose scrunching up, and he has to look away. If it had been Dean, suddenly returned to him after thirteen longing years, and someone told him he had to do it? No way. No fucking way. Someone else would have been standing there, holding that pearl. And someone else would have been standing there, holding Sam back. 

“I know, Sam.” Dean comes around the car and pats his shoulder, makes to move on back towards the trunk. But he doesn’t know. He really doesn’t.

Sam reaches out and grabs for him, catching the hem of his shirt. He shakes his head. “Dean, don’t.” He darts a glance up at him and then away. “I’m serious.”

He expects a jab, something to at least make light of the fact that he’d just called Dean his heart’s desire, but it doesn’t come. Dean moves closer so that Sam’s not straining just to hold on to him. He’s still sitting, Dean’s still standing, and he’s still got his fingers coiled in Dean’s shirt. But then Dean’s got his fingers in Sam’s hair, and maybe it’s that touch that breaks their spell.

Turning his head so fast it makes him dizzy Sam presses his face against Dean’s stomach. He breathes in like his head has just broken above water and he’s afraid to exhale. The smell of him, Jesus.

Bright sensation translates swiftly to meaning – Dean is tugging on his hair. Eye contact shocks Sam back into his own body, trembling like a single drop of water on the knife edge of a blade of grass, swelling with the purpose of falling but not yet able to let go.

_It’s just a look._ Sam tells himself a lot of things. The words come from a distance but they’re clear just the same. _Just a look, a gaze. It’s just my brother’s eyes._ He asks himself how something so simple can feel like a revelation, hypothesis and theory and law and poetry all in the same breath, question and answer interchanging because at the root of everything is understanding.

Sam rolls his head slowly from side to side and it’s astounding, this much physicality existing within reach. Like a whole other dimension. The surprisingly soft swell of his brother’s belly beside the hard jut of his hipbone, and the shifting sands of his clothes on which Sam finally finds purchase.

“Okay, okay,” Dean’s muttering above his head, and then there’s the sound of metal and denim and then Dean is meeting his eyes and saying, again, “Okay.” Saying, “Come on.”

Sam doesn’t need telling twice. It’s been a long time, so fucking long, but he’s not trying for style points. He’s focused on taking as much of his brother into himself as he can and he’s not thinking about it. Not at all.

It takes forever and it’s over in the next breath. It feels like the way time kept tripping him up after he’d finally got out of Hell, really and truly. Dean turns and slides down beside him, back against the car, and Sam all but falls sideways off the crate, ass hitting concrete and his shoulder pressed against Dean’s, whose halfhearted attempts eventually bring his jeans back into order. Sam watches his every move and tries not to let himself lick his lips; he doesn’t want to waste it, because once the taste is gone, he knows he’ll start doubting that it ever happened.

“Well,” Dean says, voice thick and slow, and he actually pats Sam’s thigh and lets his hand rest there. Sam can’t tear his eyes away. “That was about eighteen years coming, right?”

Sam actually can tear his eyes away, as it turns out. He laughs and looks up at Dean. “Try about eighteen hundred. Counting Hell-years.”

“Dude,” Dean groans and leans his head back. “That’s not funny.”

Sam shrugs and looks back to where Dean is still touching him. “It’s a little funny.”

Sam moves slowly like a hunter trying not to spook his prey, and then he’s tracing the outline of Dean’s fingers against the denim covering Sam’s skin. His breath starts coming quicker and he blurts out, “Hey Dean, I swear to god, if you—”

Dean groans without opening his eyes. “I’m not gonna freak out, dude.”

Sam actually bites his tongue as he closes his mouth. His hand turns to stone on top of Dean’s. “That’s not what I was going to say ... but yeah, that would be good too, I guess. Not freaking out. Are you freaking out?”

“Are you?” Dean blinks his eyes open and turns his head to look at Sam.

Sam kisses him.

“Such a—” Dean mutters the first chance he gets to draw breath but Sam doesn’t wait to hear what he is. Maybe Dean thinks he’s a chick or an idiot or maybe just _gay_ , who knows. Sam doesn’t care, and Dean is letting Sam kiss him, Dean is kissing him back. Dean is wrapping his fingers around Sam’s, Dean is holding Sam’s hand.

“I swear,” Sam presses the words into Dean’s lips. “I swear, Dean, if you let Michael— if you leave me alone here, if you—” 

Dean bites his bottom lip and Sam yelps, tastes blood as his barely-healed lip splits again, but the surprise and pain are immediately subsumed by delight. Dean likes this, likes kissing him, isn’t afraid of this, isn’t afraid to—

“This is way more talking than I’m used to after a blowjob,” Dean says, leaning his head back against the car again and taking in a breath, holding it, letting it out in an epic, explosive rush. Sam breathes in the silence and looks at him, feeling still and awed and just suddenly, inexplicably, unreasonably happy. Dean turns and opens his eyes, but instead of rolling them he smiles. 

Twenty minutes later they hear the garage door begin to groan its way open, and soon enough Mom’s bringing her truck in, returning it to its empty spot. Sam hadn’t realized how he’d gotten used to seeing it there. It’s ticking and hissing in the quiet air after she kills the engine, and Sam just lets himself be still, not marveling too much at the way Dean doesn’t move away from him. They’re just sitting there, thighs and shoulders barely touching, and Dean has his beer in his hand once again as Mom comes towards them.

“Hey, boys,” she smiles. She looks calm. Somehow peaceful. Sam gazes up at her and thinks once again that she’s the most beautiful and horrifying creature he’s ever seen.

“Hey, Mom.” Dean holds up an unopened beer.

She takes it from him, but it’s Sam she comes to sit beside. Maybe because the open space next to him is in front of the tire, which is pretty comfortable to sit against, Sam knows that from experience. He knows from watching Dean how to put his arm around Mom and hold on to her. Now that he’s doing it himself, though, it feels too late. She leans against his shoulder and opens her beer with her ring, the way Dean does. It’s inconceivable that she taught a four-year-old how to do that so up until today, Sam had just put it down to being another thing that Dad had brought into their family. It occurs to him for the first time that maybe she was the one who’d taught it to Dad before Dad taught it to Dean. Stranger things, right?

“You all right?” Dean leans around Sam to ask, and she nods.

“I’m all right. You two...?” She looks at Dean, and then at Sam. Before Sam can decide what his face should look like, she’s gazing back down at her beer. “This has been the...the best and the absolute...hardest day.” She takes a long swig and wipes her eyes.

Then she swallows hard and looks up at them. “I’m so glad I get to come home to you boys.” Her voice is choked, and there’s no power in the universe that can make Sam hold her gaze.

\- - -

Sam goes to bed early that night.

Mom’s so wrapped up in her own stuff that Sam almost doesn’t think she’d noticed if he kissed his brother right there in front of her, but he knows he can’t hide it from Dean, the way he can’t quite look their mother in the eyes. He can’t even bring himself to turn his gaze inward to look at or name the monstrous guilt that’s eating at him. Dean’s holding Mom’s hand across the table and Sam thinks they’re likely to be there all night, so he tops off his tumbler from the bottle they’ve been sharing, touches Dean’s shoulder as he passes, and makes his way down the hall to his room.

His cheek is throbbing like crazy so he tosses back a couple of pills with a swallow of whiskey then winces as he rubs more ointment into the cut on his nose. Every ache is multiplied the way it always is after the adrenaline crash. He makes it as far as changing into a t-shirt and flannel pants before it all catches up to him, the phantom press of Dad’s hand on his shoulder an unforgiving weight bearing him down to his bed. He’s sitting there with his head hung low when the door whispers open and Dean walks in.

“You okay?” Dean asks, gruff, and Sam can tell without looking that Dean is flicking his eyes around the room, searching out threats in every shadowed corner. Sam nods, jerky, making Dean scoff. Sam hears the clink of his ring against the glass he’d carried in and a moment later, his voice above Sam’s head is wry. “Yeah, you’re peachy, why’d I’d even ask.” A beat. “Cuz of Dad, though, right? Not because of the whole, you-know.”

Sam looks up. In defiance of the lead bubble in his chest, his lips quirk, stretch into a smile. He gazes up at his brother, his eyes catching on the freckled constellations across his cheeks, obscured by bruises like stars on a cloudy night. “Yeah, Dean.” He echoes their words from earlier. “‘Eighteen years coming’, remember? I’m not freaking out about it.”

Dean’s knees pop as he lowers himself to the bed beside Sam, their shoulders brushing. Sam can’t imagine how the Dean in that paradox timeline could have still been alive.

“Eighteen years,” Dean murmurs. “Jesus. That’s how old you were when you... Half your life, Sammy.” He lifts his glass to his lips, hesitates, then shakes his head and takes a gulp. Eyes closing as he swallows, he turns, blinking slowly as his gaze travels over Sam’s face. “Now that’s some delayed gratification, goddamn.”

That feeling from before, from back in the garage, washes over Sam again. He recognizes it immediately and pulls back from it, shies away from it because of all the things he ought to be feeling right now, _happy_ is not one of them.

“What?” Dean asks, and Sam realizes he’d pulled away physically as well, leaning back on his hands and leaving Dean looking like he’s hovering, halfway to leaning in, halfway to hauling ass.

“Nothing,” Sam says, rebalancing. At Dean’s look, he huffs softly and amends, “Nothing that can’t wait, anyway.”

“S’that right?” Dean’s voice drops, counterpoint to the way color rises to his cheeks. He lets his gaze linger on Sam’s face, lips parted, before he drops the bomb: “And what exactly are you waiting for, little brother?”

The explosion detonates inside Sam’s chest, propelling him into his brother’s waiting body. With Dean’s face cradled between his hands, Sam feels like a river emptying at last into its ocean, reunion as inevitable as gravity.

“Dean,” he whispers, a shot in the dark. But then Dean is kissing him, so his aim must have been true.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s got his hands shoved up under Dean’s shirts, that he’s pulling at him, fingers dug into flesh, brutal, until the sound of rending cloth and Dean’s soft curse reach his ears in the same moment.

“Woah, woah,” Dean murmurs then, pulling away enough that Sam can see his face, the flush on his cheeks, sheen of sweat on his throat.

Sam swallows hard. He’s parched.

“Easy, tiger.” Dean’s lips curve up as he reaches for Sam, pushes his hair back from his forehead, holds it back with his palm cradling Sam’s head and just looks at him, something like disbelief — but the good kind — writ plain on his face. “I ain’t gonna disappear, Sammy. I’m not going anywhere.”

The words have the simultaneous effect of dousing the fire that was scorching Sam’s feet, and fueling the one that’s burning low in his belly. He feels his bones start to melt and he lets his hands retreat from Dean’s body, knowing it won’t be the last time, and instead strokes his cheek, thumb caressing his ear, drawing him down like a demonstration on the effect a magnet has on iron. In a moment they’re lying on the bed together, the rough slide of denim on flannel making Sam’s thighs jump and flex, holding on to his brother while Dean gets an arm around him and pulls him close, breathing against his lips for a count of two, three, four...

“Tomorrow,” Dean says, and kisses him.

“Tomorrow?” Sam echoes. “You still owe me for before!”

Dean’s laugh shakes them both, the reverberations in his chest reaching Sam in waves. “Tomorrow. I wanna see you naked, Sam. Wanna look at you.”

Sam shudders, breaking away from Dean’s mouth to press his face against Dean’s chest. Doesn’t matter where he hides, his brother is always going to find him.

“Better go to sleep, then,” Sam mumbles, hands becoming fists in Dean’s shirt. “So tomorrow can get here.”

Dean goes utterly still.

_So tomorrow can get here and Dad will be home._

_And Santa will come._

_And we’ll find something to eat._

“Sammy, I...” Dean sounds as uncertain as Sam’s ever heard him, and Sam comes out from hiding, detangles and pushes himself up on one elbow, looking down at Dean.

This is probably why most people don’t try to have sex with their siblings, he tells himself amid abstract thoughts about memory being so vivid when it’s shared that it's basically time travel. _Time travel._ What the hell.

_What?_ Dean doesn’t say, but the lines around his eyes do. Sam frees his other hand and presses his thumb lightly to the corner of Dean’s eye, trying to smooth out the creases. Another form of time travel.

“Our lives are weird, man.” Sam shakes his head, drops his hand to tuck his fingers under the stretched-out collar of Dean’s t-shirt.

“You’re telling me,” Dean mutters. Then, “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“How ‘bout less talking, more...”

“Making out?”

Dean rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning. “Dude, what are we, twelve?”

Sam huffs and drops back down beside him, hand sliding around to the back of his neck, feeling out the overwrought muscles there. “Thought we were waiting on tomorrow?”

Dean hums, rolling his head on the pillow as Sam continues his massage, sighing open-mouthed when Sam presses his fingers up into his hair. His eyes fall closed and he murmurs, “I’m beat, man.”

Sam slows for just a moment, then begins rubbing small circles against the base of his skull. Dean has never let him do this before. Never let Sam touch him just because he could, because they both wanted him to. He stays quiet for a long time, breathing steadily through his mouth, unfocused eyes resting on Dean’s face.

“Is Mom okay?”

Sam feels the answer in the minute shake of Dean’s head under his hand.

“Did we do the right thing?”

Dean opens his eyes, slow to focus on Sam’s face. “Hell if I know, dude.” He sounds half asleep and he blinks once, then again, then leaves his eyes closed.

Sam lets himself drift, too. Lets everything wash over and around him, all the pieces of this fantastically improbable day finally settling into place. He wants to just let them be, but that was never his nature. “We saw Dad today. I mean… _Dad._ ”

Dean lets out a breath and rolls onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. Sam leaves his hand to rest on Dean’s chest and blinks his eyes against the sudden sting. “I know,” Dean says at last, a world of incredulity in his voice, and then he laughs. “I can’t believe it. Of all the things we’ve done, everything that’s happened to us, even after Mom…I never thought about seeing him again.”

“Me neither. I guess I…I didn’t let myself, you know?” Dean hums soft agreement, and Sam curls his fingers against his chest, flexes them again, Dean’s heart beating right into his palm. “I didn’t let myself think it might be possible, because if it was possible, what would we have…I mean, what might we have done…”

Sam trails off, the heartbeat in Dean’s chest so steady and strong Sam seems to pulse with it. He sucks in a breath, and memory flows with the exhale. “Oh, wow.”

“What?” Dean starts to shift like he’s going to sit up or roll to face him, and Sam keeps his hand on Dean’s chest, keeps him from moving.

“I just remembered something. That faith healer. When you were dying.”

Dean’s entire body goes stiff. Sam hears him swallow. “Roy. Roy Le Grange, out in Nebraska.”

A feeling like that was some other Sam and Dean, all those years ago, goes toe to toe with a memory so vivid it’s as though he’s still living it.

_You’re not gonna let me die in peace, are you?_ Dean asked. _I’m not going to let you die, period,_ Sam replied.

Dean’s skin was ashen, his movements hesitant. All side effects of electrocution-induced heart failure, and the electrocution a side effect of saving people while hunting things. A pair of young siblings were alive to see the next sunrise because he and Dean had been there in time, but Dean took a hit that should have been the end of him. Would have been, if not for Sam.

Jess had been dead for six months. Dad wasn’t taking their calls. Sam was only barely back in the life and this was way beyond anything he’d ever dealt with before he left for school. It took every ounce of his limited resources but in the end, he found a way. He saved his brother.

He felt awful, when he found out that Dean’s life was restored by virtue of the ‘healer’ trading one soul for another, but he didn’t feel sorry.

So it’s really not an overstatement for him to say he’s afraid to think what he might do, when he’s got enough on the line. He knows that about himself now but the knowledge feels recent. It’s nearly unfathomable to look back that far, to see himself so undistorted in the mirror of memory.

Dean stirs, drawing Sam’s eyes. His lips are pressed together, eyebrows drawn down, but when he feels Sam’s gaze his whole face shifts, pupils dilating as he refocuses, turns onto his side to face him. His hand, strong and warm and calloused, smooths over Sam’s hip like he’s settling him, realigning him.

Sam blinks a couple of times, eyelids heavy. He’s got Dean’s voice in his head. His words from earlier, when the two of them were alone in the kitchen to give Mom and Dad some time before sending Dad back to the world where Mom was ashes, where Sam had turned his back. _I’m good with who I am,_ Dean had said, eyes not wavering from Sam's. _I’m good with who you are._

Maybe this was exactly what Dean meant, what Dean was exonerating them from. They are who they are by virtue of every good and bad and fucked-up thing they’ve done. They’ve been delivered to this moment thanks to every good and bad and fucked-up decision they’ve made. And if Dean’s good with where they are now, then Sam’s good, too.

Some time later Sam rouses from his trance and slides out of the bed to turn off the light and lock the door. Dean twists and struggles his way out of his jeans and flannel without lifting himself from the bed or, as far as Sam can tell, opening his eyes. They settle together as though thirty years hadn’t passed since they last slept entwined. Dean holds him with a hand pressed to Sam’s chest, his knees bent and legs molded up against Sam’s.

**Author's Note:**

> So much love and infinite thanks to my friend and first reader @stardust_made, whose cheerleading and astute beta powers helped me find the courage to carry on with this story.
> 
> Please subscribe to this fic if you'd like to see more; there is at least one more chapter coming.


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